Introduction

There has always been a false impression that Erving Goffman’s work represents a variant of symbolic interactionism, at least in the United States, whereas in fact, Goffman was more inclined to think of Émile Durkheim (1912) than George Herbert Mead as the inspiration for his work. Part of this misconception comes from Goffman’s first major work, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), where presentations of self are seen to involve the active manipulation by a person on a stage of actors who are all presenting self to sustain a line of conduct in accordance with a cultural scrip, thereby creating a sense, even if somewhat illusionary, of solidarity. In contrast, symbolic interactionists view self-presentations and their verification by others as the driving motive force of human interaction.

Goffman (1961a, 1963b) also outlined in some of his works the pathologies of interaction when there is a “detachment of self” from ongoing relations with others and the symbols marking these relations: when self-presentations go wrong, when individuals have characteristics that give them stigma, when they must adapt to total institutions and other situations where pathologies in the organization of interaction lead individuals to experience social pain. Here Goffman comes closer to symbolic interactionist views of self attached to a variety of objects, not just other person but also almost any physical objects (totems, cars, flags, places, other persons) and virtually an unlimited number of culturally defined and more abstract objects (beliefs, values, status). People have “identity kits” and the presentation of self involves employing all the tools in this kit. Here, there is an application of Durkheim’s emphasis on ritual toward objects (society and groups, symbols of social structures, conceptions of self) and symbolic interactionist view of self as a cognitive-emotionally charge construct that individuals present and must have affirmed. The failure to verify self will, Goffman argued, lead to negative emotional arousal and negative evaluation of self. Thus, such negative emotions as shame, humiliation, embarrassment, fear, distress, etc. not only mark a failure to verify self, but they also strike at the very core of individuals’ sense of self and, thereby, have effects long after any particular interaction is completed.

Abstract

By examining the evolutionary biology of hominins and then humans, it is possible to construct more robust explanations for how dynamics at the micro level of social organization affect the integration of the micro, meso, and macro realms that constitute social reality. In this chapter, the evolution of hominins and eventually humans is reviewed with an eye to understanding how the pre-adaptations and behavioral propensities of hominins could be selected upon to create a more emotional animal, Homo sapiens, that was not locked into the group and kin structures of most mammals, with the result that humans have been able to build up solidarities at the group level that do not lock Homo sapiens into the micro social universe. Rather, the same emotional dynamic that generate micro-level solidarities can, under specified conditions, cause integration of the micro with the macro social universe composed of institutional domains, stratification systems, and societies. Evolutionary sociology is not just an esoteric program of theory and research but, rather, an approach that can shed new light on old theoretical problems.

Sociology emerged as a discipline to explain the dramatic changes associated with industrialization and urbanization. These new social orders appeared to be on the edge of chaos for many of those living through the tumultuous transition from agrarian to industrial social formations. Indeed, the first generations of sociologists in the nineteenth century posited a wide variety of “pathologies” inhering in the structure and culture of modern societies. In analyzing these transformative transitions, most early theorists employed an evolutionary approach, outlining the forces that had driven societies from simple to ever-larger and more complex patterns of social organization; and all had implicit conceptions of how these formations violated the fundamental nature of humans, thereby generating personal pathologies from alienation through egoism to marginality. Indeed, these are still the central problematics of much critical sociology and sociology more generally, but now we can approach questions of human nature and the relation of this nature to patterns of social organization with more sophisticated analytical tools that reduce speculation and downplay the often highly evaluative overtones of much sociological analysis of the human condition and society.

Most early founders of sociology adhered to an evolutionary view of societal development as moving through stages from simple to ever more complex forms of social organization. These models fell into disfavor in the early decades of the 20th century, only to be resurrected in the 1960s (Lenski, 1966; Parsons, 1966). At about the same time, a new kind of evolutionary theorizing was emerging, one that sought to explain human behavior and social organization in terms of the effect of natural selection on the human genome.

For many sociologists, the emergence of sociobiology, as it was first called (Wilson, 1975, 1978), posed a threat to the discipline because its proponents came from biology and seemed to be arguing that the subject matter of sociology could be explained by reference to genetics. Such reductionism naturally aroused the suspicions, if not outright hostility, of sociologists who were reluctant to explain complex sociocultural formations by reference to elementary biological processes. It was bad enough, many sociologists argued, that behaviorists kept trying to explain human social organization with principles of individual behavior, but for biologists to enter into sociology and attempt to explain sociology's subject matter with notions of genetic fitness was too much. Moreover, it raised for sociologists the ghost of Social Darwinism and eugenics from earlier decades. The notion that genes are “selfish” (Dawkins, 1976), and by virtue of blind natural selection seek to sustain the information that they contain in the gene pool, could hardly account for the topics of interest to sociologists.

In exchange theories, interaction is a process of giving and receiving valued resources. An individual gives up resources to receive resources that are viewed as more valued, thereby earning a “profit” from the exchange. Exchange theories owe their inspiration to two branches of social science: behavioristic psychology and neoclassical economics. Within the behavioristic tradition, organisms are conceptualized as reward seeking and punishment avoiding. As a consequence of this propensity, animals will emit behaviors that bring rewards or positive reinforcement and avoid behaviors that bring punishments or negative reinforcement. Those behaviors that have brought rewards in the past will be repeated; if the receipt of rewards has been associated with a particular stimulus, the presence of this or a similar stimulus will initiate the same behaviors that in the past were reinforced. Repetition of behaviors will continue until they no longer bring rewards. The more an organism has received rewards of a given kind in the recent past, the less valuable will additional increments of these rewards be as the organism becomes “satiated” with a particular type of reward.

The original program in behaviorism avoided the “black box” of human cognition, preferring instead to study observable stimuli and behaviors (Skinner, 1938, 1953; Watson, 1913). For such a program to be of interest to sociologists, however, the original restrictions on studying only directly observable behaviors had to be compromised.

It is somewhat surprising that sociology, as the discipline concerned with the dynamics of social structures, has developed relatively few theories on how social structures determine the arousal and flow of emotions. For sociologists, social structures are generally viewed as patterns of social relationships among individual and collective actors that persist over time. At the microlevel of social organization, individuals are viewed as located at a position within a set of positions. Most theories conceptualize locations within social structures as status positions, with each position carrying cultural contents (norms, ideologies, values), prestige or honor, authority, and other characteristics. A person's behavior, often seen as role behavior, will reflect the cultural prescriptions, honor, and authority of the position vis-à-vis other positions in the structure.

Another way to conceptualize structure is as a network, with positions being conceptualized as nodes that reveal relationships with other nodes. Rather than focus on the characteristics or incumbents of the nodes per se, the form of the network as a whole is analyzed in terms of certain basic properties, such as density (the level of connectedness among all nodes), centrality (the degree to which connections among nodes run through one or a few key nodes), cliques (the extent to which the overall network reveals subsets of high density of relations among closely connected nodes), bridges (the number of positions connecting cliques), brokerage (the capacity of nodes to control the flow of resources across subsets of nodes in the network), and equivalence (the number and nature of subsets of nodes that reveal similar forms).

The dramaturgical metaphor comes from William Shakespeare, who proclaimed, “All the world is a stage, and all men and women merely players” who have their entrances and exits and play many parts during the course of their lifetime. In viewing social interaction as theater, attention is drawn to the script, stage, audience, staging props, and actors who play dramatic roles. Let us begin with the script. All dramaturgical theorists adopt the view that interaction is guided by a script written by culture. All actors are aware of the norms, values, beliefs, and other symbolic elements that direct how they are to talk, act, and otherwise play their roles.

Interaction is also performed on a stage in front of an audience. People act as if they are on a stage, and so each person in an interaction views others in a situation as constituting the audience to whom a presentation of self is given. In seeing people as actors performing on a stage, one's attention is drawn to the props – from clothing to physical objects – that individuals use to play their roles and to interpret the cultural script guiding their performance. Culture is not a straightjacket; although it is constraining, all actors are given some dramatic license in their playing of a role. Indeed, dramaturgical approaches emphasize impression management by actors as they present their selves to their audiences.

The sociology of emotions, as a systematic field of study in sociology, is now about three decades old. During this time, theoretical and research programs have proliferated, with the result that the study of emotions is now one of the forefront areas of sociological inquiry. Yet, despite the dramatic increase in activity, many conceptual and methodological issues remain unresolved. Even as the field has grown, foundational conceptual issues are still debated, whereas research on emotions has only been cumulative within a rather narrow range of theoretical traditions and with the use of a limited arsenal of research methodologies. There is, then, much to be done in the sociology of emotions. In this last chapter, our goal is to review the key issues that face both theorizing and research on emotions, with some suggestions for how the sociology of emotions should proceed in the future.

CONCEPTUAL ISSUES IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF EMOTIONS

What Are Emotions?

Terms like sentiments, feelings, affect, and emotions are often used rather loosely in theories of emotion. Moreover, some theorists specifically limit inquiry to a particular definition of these terms. More than terminological imprecision is involved in definitional problems. Diverse uses of terms often reflect substantive disputes over what emotions are and how they are generated. Let us review just a few of the key lines of debate.

Biology versus Culture. One line of debate is over whether emotions are hardwired in human neurology or socially constructed.